Tesla/SolarCity have announced the launch of a building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) residential roofing system comprised of a range of different tile formats, colours and coatings that aesthetically as possible mirror common conventional tile formats. The solar tiles can be provided as a retrofit option to the replacement of an existing aged tiled roof or as a new build alternative to standard residential roofing systems.
Headquartered in California, Sunpreme has launched the Maxima GxB380 SM, 380W, touted as the most advanced high efficiency bifacial panels with integrated a TIGO optimizer and uses its proprietary ‘Hybrid Cell Technology’ (HCT) platform.
Maxim Integrated Products has introduced a new cell-string optimizer technology that allows PV panels to harvest significantly more energy and simplifies design complexity for solar installation projects, notably shade mitigation and eliminating hot-spots while minimizing the impact of overall power degradation mechanisms.
Solar PV has a strong role to play in the Philippines where energy demand continues to grow and the power mix remains expensive. While significant utility-scale solar deployments peaked ahead of a deadline to qualify for the Feed-in-Tariff in March this year, a new subsidy quota is on the horizon. PV Tech caught up with Pete Maniego, senior policy adviser of the Institute for Climate & Sustainable Cities and of Counsel of Dime & Eviota Law, to gather his insights on solar subsidies and how PV can compete with fossil fuels in the Southeast Asian country.
Raising Power GmbH, a subsidiary of Shunfeng International Clean Energy (SFCE) has updated its full service offerings for the technical operation management of photovoltaic (PV) power plant systems.
This blog contains the concluding part of my Tales from Taiwan feature, with the first blog - Tales from Taiwan Part 1: more capacity comes online, but not in Taiwan - appearing on PV-Tech earlier this week.
Community solar is emerging as an auspicious new source of demand in the US, opening up access to solar among previously excluded groups. Ethical Electric, a Washington-based renewable energy company providing 100% clean electricity to retail customers, recently launched a community solar division under the new name of CleanChoice Energy to get on board with the disruption. Managing director Laura Pagliarulo and chief impact officer Richard Graves discussed with PV Tech the company’s plans, its recent SunShot Initiative award, and how community solar is set to become ‘retail 2.0’.
After a week in Taiwan, overlapping with the PV Taiwan exhibition and conference in Taipei last week, my main takeaway is the scale of new capacity that is confirmed to be coming online over the next 3-6 months, no matter what is happening today regarding supply levels and end-market demand. This and other conclusions from my week in Taiwan are covered in two blogs this week on PV-Tech.
MBJ Solutions has introduced a new integrated ‘backend’ module testing system to provide greater production line operability for PV manufacturers. The MBJ backend solution combines the most important inspection tasks in one compact system: an A+A+A LED sun simulator, a hipot and grounding test and our proven EL inspection technology. All the inspection steps are performed sunny side down, which makes the integration into a production much easier than before.
